Why UVA President’s Resignation Could Be a ‘Watershed Moment’

Under pressure from the Trump administration, state leaders and conservative alumni, the University of Virginia’s president of nearly seven years stepped down Friday, declaring that while he was committed to the university and inclined to fight, he could not in good conscience push back just to save his job.

The Department of Justice demanded that Ryan resign in order to resolve an investigation into whether UVA sufficiently complied with President Donald Trump’s orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion. UVA dissolved its DEI office in March, though some alumni, board members and legal advocacy groups have claimed the university didn’t go far enough in rooting out DEI.

The Trump administration has made several sweeping and unprecedented demands of Harvard and Columbia Universities as part of a broader effort to reshape who gets into institutions, what they learn while in college and who teaches them. But this is the first time federal officials have explicitly tied grant dollars to the resignation of a university official, and experts and faculty members warn that the episode marks a worrying precedent that could fundamentally change the university presidency.

“I think this is a watershed moment,” said Jon Holbein, an associate professor of public policy, politics and education at UVA. “If a moderate president at a conservative–for–higher education institution who has followed the law when it comes to diversity [can be pushed out], no president is immune from the Trump administration’s ire.”

Ryan’s resignation sent shock waves throughout the higher education community and the Charlottesville campus. Faculty members, students and other supporters of Ryan gathered on the university’s lawn Friday to decry the federal government’s intervention into UVA’s affairs, and on Saturday, hundreds joined Ryan for a final run around campus, The Cavalier Daily reported. (As president, Ryan ran regularly and invited students and faculty to join him.)

UVA faculty, some board members, students and community say Ryan’s departure is a blow to the institution. “His loss makes us worse,” said Michael Kennedy, a UVA professor and faculty representative on the Board of Visitors, describing Ryan as a “shattering success.”

News reports and Ryan’s resignation letter indicate that like at Harvard and Columbia, the Justice Department threatened UVA’s international students and funding cuts, though it’s not clear if getting rid of Ryan will be enough for the administration. Columbia complied with the administration’s demands and still hasn’t seen its federal grants restored.

“While there are very important principles at play here, I would at a very practical level be fighting to keep my job for one more year while knowingly and willingly sacrificing others in this community,” wrote Ryan, noting he had previously planned to step down next year.

Higher education experts told Inside Higher Ed that Trump’s exercise of power over UVA is incredibly concerning but not that surprising.

“This is an indication of an additional lever—and probably a stronger lever—being pulled by the executive branch to intentionally try to control the learning environments in our colleges and universities, and to do so to achieve political objectives,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for the American Council on Education. “We should have seen this coming.”

UVA in the Hot Seat

University officials credit Ryan, the ninth president of UVA, with leading the university to new heights. Since taking the helm in August 2018, he led the university through the aftermath of the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally as well as the pandemic and helped to raise a record $6 billion as part of a recent capital campaign.

But it was his efforts to boost faculty and student diversity and reckon with the historical role of slavery at UVA, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson but built by enslaved people, that sparked the most backlash from conservative alumni, who also took issue with his handling of a recent campus shooting and other changes on campus.

The Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group that publicly called for Ryan’s resignation, called the DEI efforts exclusive, discriminatory and “the new McCarthyism.” (Alumni supportive of Ryan launched their own group in part to counter the council’s messages.)

The Trump administration built on these complaints, quietly launching an investigation against the university in April. The Justice Department requested more information about the university’s admissions practices and said it had received information that UVA failed to fully carry out directives dismantling DEI.

Although higher education legal experts have warned that Trump’s executive orders don’t change the underlying laws, colleges have faced a difficult balancing act under the Trump administration. Nixing their DEI programs could invite pushback from faculty and students, but publicly fighting the directives could lead to federal investigations or funding cuts. Still, several universities, including UVA, opted to shutter their DEI offices.

Adding to the pressure on UVA officials, the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has appointed nearly all of the members of the university’s Board of Visitors, giving him an opportunity to put his stamp on the flagship university. Youngkin, whose term ends this year, signed his own orders banning DEI in higher education and celebrated UVA’s March decision to close the DEI office and end related practices. As of July 1, all 17 members will be appointed by Youngkin. (Virginia Senate Democrats sued state officials this month, alleging that Youngkin was ignoring the State Legislature’s decision to reject recent university board appointments.)

Multiple sources noted that Trump was able to strong-arm the situation and force Ryan out because of who was on the university’s board and in the state’s governor’s mansion.

“The administration can’t necessarily control a university without—in some part—the university’s consent,” said Adam Harris, a senior fellow at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “If [Trump] said, ‘You need to fire the president, otherwise you’re going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding,’ [college boards] could say, ‘Well, we can fight that.’”

What’s Next?

Multiple faculty members and other experts are now waiting to see what happens next, particularly after the UVA and greater Charlottesville community has its say.

“The UVA community will not go quietly,” said Jon Becker, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The faculty will rise up. It’s not just the faculty. It’s a very tight community. There will be people who are quite upset by this.”

Kennedy, the faculty board member, said the Faculty Senate condemned the Justice Department’s demands in a resolution passed Friday afternoon. The senate wants the board to provide more information about what happened by July 14.

Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware and a UVA graduate, cautioned that “nothing is set in stone.” She and others pointed to the 2012 incident when the Board of Visitors ousted then-president Teresa Sullivan. The campus community quickly rallied to support her, and Sullivan was back in office in less than a month.

“It will require collective action to make a difference and change the pathway that we’re on,” Baker said, adding that pushback will need to come from prominent and wealthy alumni.

Already, several prominent alumni have spoken out, including journalist Katie Couric. On Facebook she expressed her dismay at the ouster, saying she was “saddened and honestly sickened.”

In ousting Ryan, Baker sees a broader campaign from the conservative groups as well as the board, state officials and the Trump administration to “resegregate higher education and create a world where places like UVA are only available for rich white men.” So, what she took away from Friday’s news is that “I am the problem.”

“Ultimately, all of these moves are being done, right, to stop people like me—a Black girl who from the age of 5 lived in Virginia and went to UVA for her undergrad and master’s degree,” she said. “I can only imagine what current students feel like.”

Joel Gardner, president of the Jefferson Council, said Friday that getting rid of Ryan was necessary in order to protect the university’s core values of depoliticization and intellectual diversity. When asked if the Trump administration’s role in pressuring the president to resign was part of a political agenda, he said absolutely not, stressing that both the Board of Visitors and the governor were involved well before the DOJ.

Still, many higher education experts are fearful about what this demonstration of power could mean for other colleges and their DEI programs. Harris from New America compared the Trump administration’s tactics to those of a childhood bully.

“When you give a bully your lunch money, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to stop asking for more. It means they’re going to ask for your lunch money and maybe the additional apple that you had in your backpack tomorrow,” he said. “I think that institutions will both see that the administration is being incredibly aggressive, but they will also see that compliance doesn’t satisfy them.”

In the end, he fears that it will be detrimental to the retention, persistence and graduation rates of minority students, setting American higher education back to where it was 70 years ago, before the civil rights movement.

“It becomes a question of, how much of your institution’s autonomy, how much of your institution’s character, how much of your own credibility are you willing to sacrifice to appease an unappeasable administration?” he said.